The Global Warming Megathread

[downtroad]

There is no contradictory data, at all. A recent study went through every single climate change paper over the past 5 years. Not a single paper, not one, had any data to refute the charge.

 

There simply is no debate no matter how much you want there to be.

 

It's real.

 

Also we have 850,000 years of data from ice cores. Not thermometers or tree rings. We can measure the CO2 exactly, and we use recent times as a baseline. These methods are very acurate.

 

This "fear of loosing research budgets" is BS, please show some evidence for that. Thats just not how science or funding works. There are plenty of people with agendas (oil companies etc) funding research to refute climate change and they still cannot find anything.

 

This isn't about some professor called Lacey, it's about hundreds of thousands of scientists all agreeing, and not one being able to refute their claims.

 

We really need to be teaching kids today about the scientific method. Because our adults don't have a clue.

 

Happily we do not make decision based on the weird, misinformed views of 20% of the population, we make them based on the majority. So the people who still don't beleive really are irrelavant.

[Greybeard]

There's a general synopsis on climate change here...

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn9903

 

The only worthwhile debate is on how it can be halted and/or reversed but many scientists believe we're passed the tipping point and climate change now has a life of its own. From here on we're just spectators and in the future, possibly victims.

 

How it might affect Sheffield was well illustrated yeserday by the mini-tornado that struck parts of Leeds.

[troyhark]

Oh dear - you are a victim of the current hysteria. Media panic.

 

........Then it was Herpes that was going to finish us all off - then Aids, of course, was going to kill us all. I said back at the time (late 80's) that if you weren;t homosexual, or having sex with africans your chances of catching it were absoutely minimal - and so it has turned out.

And maybe by warning people to be careful/use a condom, it helped prevent the further spread of Aids. Your rationalisation is like saying the 'wear your seatbelt' ads were pointless, people aren't being killed anywhere near as much as they use to be in car accidents.

Some places may get flooded, but a lot of land that is now too cold will become habitable.

That's not a good thing overall.

Things have always changed dramtically. In the Middle Ages, the Vikings farmed successfully in Greenalnd, and the Romans grew grapes near Hadrians' Wall. It was obviously a lot warmer then than now - so why are you panicking?

Climate can, will and always has altered. Sometimes it's a bit better but the usual result is mass extictions occuring esp. if there is a quick change.

Also this is the first time that we are affecting the climate, which also changes the rules somewhat. Plus global warming does not mean more sunshine. It means more energy in the atmosphere, which means more energy in the weather and as Katrina showed, weather with lots of energy is a bad thing. Last year was a year in which rather too many Hurricane records were broken for comfort.

[nick2]

I saw a program on TV that said the increased amount of CO2 is actually making the Brazilian rainforest grow faster than it was 10 years ago, surely if that happens the increased number fo trees will absorb all the extra CO2 ?

[troyhark]

A prime example was the BSE scare. By now, according to prof Lacey and co several million people should have died of mad cow disease. Actual number so far, 153.

True, back in 1990 no one could prove that Lacey was incorect, but his error margins were huge.

And yet the government has spent billions incinerating al cattle over thirty months old to keep them out of the human food chain.

Was this money well spent?

Well to find out you have to go in back in time and not take preventative measures.

And it may have been that the no. of cases would have been far higher.

This pseudo resonable reasoning is like martyn1949s.

 

I was aware in the early 80s of Creutzfeld Jacob syndome ['Mad Human disease'] and it's unusally high incidence of parts of Papau New Guinea.

The reason - eating brain tisuue of humans.

[troyhark]

I saw a program on TV that said the increased amount of CO2 is actually making the Brazilian rainforest grow faster than it was 10 years ago, surely if that happens the increased number fo trees will absorb all the extra CO2 ?

Not if we are chopping them down even faster to make beefburger farms for MacDonalds or to grow soya!

[downtroad]

I saw a program on TV that said the increased amount of CO2 is actually making the Brazilian rainforest grow faster than it was 10 years ago, surely if that happens the increased number fo trees will absorb all the extra CO2 ?

 

Sadly not. We cut down the older trees and plant new younger ones. But the older trees soak up more CO2. It takes 35 fully grown trees to soak up the CO2 of one SUV for the year, and it may take those trees 35-70 years to reach that size.

[nick2]

Sadly not. We cut down the older trees and plant new younger ones. But the older trees soak up more CO2. It takes 35 fully grown trees to soak up the CO2 of one SUV for the year, and it may take those trees 35-70 years to reach that size.

 

Oh well, it was worth a try.

[Greybeard]

I saw a program on TV that said the increased amount of CO2 is actually making the Brazilian rainforest grow faster than it was 10 years ago, surely if that happens the increased number fo trees will absorb all the extra CO2 ?

 

TV programmes !

 

I saw one that pointed out that planting a tree in virgin soil released more CO2 from the ground than the tree would absorb in the first twenty years of growth. And another predicting increasing drought in the Amazon basin and eventually forest fires that would reduce the forest just a few pockets of mature trees.

 

The media seem to go out of their way to make it hard to see the wood for the trees

[princealbert]

I have a tan in september,it cant be a bad thing.